On Halls of Fame

Since nothing new has happened since I last posted, I wanted to post a few thoughts on the whole "Hall of Fame" issue and about the Daria Fanworks Awards in general.

Before I get started, Dr. Mike deserves hearty congratulations for the great job he did. How he put up with the continual repetitive dumb questions he was asked is beyond me. He found something he wanted to do, he took the trouble to do it, and he did it, and I feel that he did it very well.

It seems the idea to do this every year is catching steam. From my understanding, Dr. Mike doesn't want to do this anymore and Richard Lobinske is taking it upon himself to regularize the process. With that, there is a discussion regarding whether new categories should be added. And one idea that has popped up more than once is a "Hall of Fame".

The problem with a "Hall of Fame" is that it has the danger for becoming something like Martin Pollard's Recommended Authors list. Before the name change (I believe it used to be called the "Featured Authors" list), it was something like a bold statement that the one's listed on MJP's list were the best fan fiction writers out there, and there was no appeal, since the list belonged to the Outpost Daria website. Which begs the question, "Why does MJP get to choose who the 'best' writers are?" Some fans (myself included) felt that Mr. Pollard sometimes lacked good judgment in deciding who was a Featured/Recommended Author, and that his choices were based more on fan popularity rather than talent.

Unfortunately, every contest is, in one way or another, a popularity contest -- even the most recent one. One hopes that the DFA would be an objective judgment of the best fan work in Daria fandom, but not everyone leaves their objectivity at the voting booth -- I wonder how many fans had even read ALL of the nominees for a particular award. The best part of the idea was having the ballots computerized, so that persons voting against 'popular' works of fiction couldn't be taken to task if an well-known fan organizer read their ballots. The DFA might not be PERFECT, but they were "more perfect" than what had been done before.

As of now, the HoF is being looked at as a way to 'grandfather' in works that were published before the first DFAs were delivered on January 9th/10th. This proposes an huge number of candidates -- all of Daria fanfiction ever written, to be precise -- and how would one select who got nominated? Most likely, fan popularity. "I've never read Kara Wild's 'Abruptly Amy', but it must be important, so I'll nominate it." (No offense is implied; the work is simply given as an example.) The result is the same thing as before -- works nominated on a name basis instead of being actually read by someone. (At least, it's a general fan indication of popularity, instead of being one fan's list by fiat.)

Furthermore, I remember tafka's original complaint that fan art had been ignored (it seems that some extra art categories were added to the DFAs -- am I wrong?) during the DFA creation process, and that fan art suffered the burden of being ignored in general. I mean, why are we just looking at fan fiction for the Hall of Fame? Aren't we slighting artists? And what about web designers, or fans who are fans but don't create anything?

Will there be a grandfathering in of fan art? Will each DFA category have to have something grandfathered in to make up for all the people "unfortunate" enough to have created their work -- whatever it is -- before January 1, 2004?

Here is what *I* would do (note: I'm simply doing what many fans do, griping about a process and not offering to lend a helping hand -- this is me just living in my fantasy world):

* DFAs to be given out in February.
* Only FIVE works of fiction/art to be listed in any category. These would be the five stories/works getting the most submissions for consideration, since who wants to read fifteen different works of fan fiction to determine the Best Helen Story? Nominations in January. Ballot and voting in February. If a category fails to get THREE nominations submitted to it, no award is awarded in that category for the year. This helps pare the awards down somewhat.
* A new Special Merit award to be added to the list of nominees. One for lit, one for art. Great fan works of the past can be nominated. This will take up the grandfather clause.
* Special award to be given in July. (The Glenn Eichler? The Janet Neilson? The Mike Wendell?) This award is to be given to a Daria fan. It can be a writer. It can be an artist. It can be a webmaster. It can be a non-contributor. It is given to someone, past or present, active or non-active, who will be honored for their contributions to Daria fandom. And that contribution requires nothing more than being...a Daria fan.